Welcome to another edition of PROse, the B2B marketer's no BS guide to growing an engaged audience.

Editor's Note:

An unfinished draft of this email was mistakenly sent earlier today 🤦🏾‍♂️

Sorry about that!

Here's the final version of the newsletter.

Does this sound familiar?

It's a new quarter and senior leadership has set new growth targets for the entire team.

Social, which is under your purview, has to do a lot more this quarter to hit your targets.

You don't know how you're going to do it (or how they came up with these numbers), but it's your job to figure it out.

A "few" cups coffee and a hundred less strands of hairs later, you've devised a plan:

💡 We're going to post 3-4x/day across current platforms. More posts = more attention = more site visits, demo signups, or whatever your target is.

Fast-forward 30 days, nothing is working, leadership is getting impatient, you have no clue how to get back on track, and now you're worried for your job.

Just writing this is triggering my stress, because I've certainly been here.

Then I figured out there's a better way.

Why people consume content

Before I tell what that way is, I want to explain why people consume content.

People consume content for one reason: to fill a need.

That may take different forms, but it all relates to one idea...

People browse social for useful content—something that impacts their day in a big or small way.

Our job as marketers is to figure out what our audience's need(s) is when it comes to our category.

Then we create content to fill that need.

"Duh, Darien. That's not insightful."

Oh, but it is :)

Let's review the scenario above where we upped content production to 3-4 posts per day. This is a trap most social marketers fall into (myself included).

Instead of figuring out how to create more useful content, we just publish content more frequently.

The problem is, on a high cadence, you'll end up posting a ton of fluffy content that has no positive impact on your audience's day.

And eventually, your followers tune you out.

For 99% of brands, less really is more.

That's not just my opinion, either. Studies show consumers prefer less content from brands.

The better way

Hopefully I've convinced you that posting a ton of content isn't the right answer.

So what is?

The Hero & Hygiene Content Model.

Here's how it works:

Hero content

Hero content is designed to help your customer solve a specific problem.

The customer is the hero, because with your content they're able to solve the specific challenge (the "enemy").

So how does Hero Content work?

Every quarter you focus on 1-3 moments you can create buzz around. We'll call the marketing of these moments a "launch".

The moments you choose should be centered around an issue that a good portion of your target audience is experiencing.

You can pull ideas for "moments" from:

• Trending FAQs

• Priority product releases

• Major industry events or news

These output of these launches can be:

• Templates

• Micro-sites

• Virtual PR event

• Benchmark reports

• Step-by-step guides

Let's try this out with a Fintech startup—we'll call it bRamp—that sells corporate cards (at this point that's all the Fintechs, right?):

Most of their target audience is probably trying to figure out how to reign in spending as they adjust to the changing business and macroeconomic environment.

Here are two 'launches' bRamp could create:

• A benchmark report that showcases how other are are allocating their spend

• A step-by-step guide/deck for a key finance ops component, e.g. approving spending requests

With their content, bRamp's audience members are able to identify excess spending, make appropriate adjustments, and extend the business's runway without new layoffs.

This isn't just useful for them, but it creates a ton of goodwill for bRamp.

If they weren't a customer before, they're definitely more likely to become one now.

Hygiene content

In between these big moments, you want to stay connected with your audience.

That's what we'll do with Hygiene Content.

This is your typical brand social content:

• Polls

• Memes

• Engagement questions

• Outbound engagement with your accounts in your niche

The only difference is, you need less of it to maintain your audience's attention and hit those lofty targets set by leadership.

Roughly 1-2 posts per day should work.

This may be a big change from how you're currently approaching your social strategy so I would take it slow.

If you're posting frequently now, don't completely ditch it before you can prove this strategy works (it does... you just want the numbers to speak for themselves 😉)

Start with 1 "launch" in Q2, or even Q1 if your team has bandwidth. Then build on top of that.

That's a wrap, folks! But before you go...

I'm thinking about building a small community of B2B marketers who are committed to building a world-class social function. Want in?

Hit 'reply' on this email and if enough people raise their hand, I'll spin something up.

See ya next week (on time 😂)!

DP